The Death of Optimism in the United States

The Occupy Wall Street movement may be small and disorganized, and the Tea Party may be extremist and racist, but today, both of them reflect the mood of Americans better than Congress. Even though Congress is the legitimate representation of popular power, Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party have more support than the government that emerges from the voting booths. America is experiencing an unusual (at least historically) moment in time where pessimism and mistrust in its institutions are seriously shaping its future.

According to a survey by The New York Times and CBS, 25 percent of the population has a favorable opinion of Occupy Wall Street and 46 percent believe that their claims coincide with those of a majority of Americans. In the same survey, 9 percent support the work of Congress, 10 percent support the Government and 46 percent view the Barack Obama’s management favorably. In another survey, in February, 27 percent thought that the Tea Party is an example of the concerns of all citizens of this country.

Even allowing for the relative nature of the polls, which are strongly influenced by media coverage, and considering the risk of using a “mood assessment” in a political system where the only valid expression is a vote, we can recognize in these figures, and others that have been attesting this trend for months, that the U.S. is going through an identity crisis that is at the same time, a reflection and a consequence of its economic and political crisis.

Looking at the daily measurements on the website RealClearPolitics, the loss of confidence in Congress has been increasing, almost constantly, for more than two years. Neither party attracts particular enthusiasm: Democrats and Republicans are tied in terms of popular acceptance — 42 percent. The same can be said about the number of people who believe that the country is going in the wrong direction, a number that is constantly increasing and now reaches 75 percent.

This pessimism is the most serious symptom of our times. America is not very different in this respect to other European countries, where poor economic conditions and a lack of response from the political class have generated skepticism about democratic institutions and, in some cases, movements similar to those of Occupy Wall Street, or Spain’s “Indignados.” The equivalent of the Tea Party can be found in the rise of right-wing forces in European countries and in the germination of an ugly cultural rivalry between northern and southern Europe.

The U.S. is special in that this pessimism is far more destructive in a country based on individual initiative and the confidence of citizens in their society. European systems, to some extent, operate above the citizen. In the United States, the country’s success is essentially linked to the success of its members (read: Steve Jobs). Optimism is the main driving force of an economy whose two thirds rely on private consumption, an activity that is closely related to confidence in the future, that is to say, optimism.

Americans do not find many reasons to be optimistic. 66 percent of citizens believe that the distribution of wealth is unjust, and the data prove that they are right. A report by the Congressional Budget Office, the country’s most respected institution in economic issues, certified on Wednesday, exactly as Occupy Wall Street claims, that 1 percent of the population has doubled its income over the last 30 years, while that the poorest fifth rose by 18 percent.

However, injustice in resource distribution does not explain all of the current gloom. In fact, this imbalance has been occurring since Ronald Reagan and his famous trickle-down policy. This inequality only now appears as an inconvenience in a nation where making money, the more the better, has never been a sin. That issue has moved up the list of citizen claims to the extent that other problems have begun to torment and lower the moral of American families; problems such as unemployment, housing foreclosures and student debt, which discourage millions of young people in circumstances were education is essential for the future.

These days President Obama has been offering proposals for these three issues. He has submitted a plan of public investment to stimulate the economy, another plan for more favorable mortgage refinancing and one more, on Wednesday, to reduce student payments for tuition, which usually extend for many years. All of these are plans that have received the most praise from experts and that reunite ideas that in the past have been supported by both Democrats and Republicans. But these plans are unlikely to solve the problems because, unfortunately, their author, Obama, is now part of the problem.

This is the third leg of the crisis of confidence in the U.S. — the disappointment of the political situation. Disappointment, first, with Obama’s administration, who is of yet still significantly supported, but who has not brought the huge change that he seemed to advertise.

Americans’ character has been poisoned these days. For the first time in its history it is reacting with complexes to a competitor: China. In the eighties and nineties of this past century they were concerned about competition from Japan, but the situation was unclear. Now they are frightened by the rise of rivals, and both the right and the left, call for more protectionism and isolationism, the opposite direction of the natural instinct of this country.